Jamal Khashoggi Killing Story

 Jamal Khashoggi Killing Story 

On 2 October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a US-based journalist and critic of Saudi Arabia's government, walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where he was murdered.

In the months that followed, conflicting narratives emerged over how he died, what happened to his remains, and who was responsible.

Saudi officials said the journalist was killed in a "rogue operation" by a team of agents sent to persuade him to return to the kingdom, while Turkish officials said the agents acted on orders from the highest levels of the Saudi government.

Despite reassuring friends that he would not face any problems inside, he gave Ms Cengiz two mobile phones and told her to call an adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan if he did not come back out.

She ultimately waited for more than 10 hours outside the consulate and returned the following morning when Khashoggi had still not reappeared.

What did Saudi Arabia say?

For more than two weeks, Saudi Arabia consistently denied any knowledge of Khashoggi's fate.

Prince Mohammed told Bloomberg News that the journalist had left the consulate "after a few minutes or one hour". "We have nothing to hide," he added.

Who was Jamal Khashoggi?

As a prominent Saudi journalist, he covered major stories, including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the rise of the late al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, for various Saudi news organisations.

For decades, the 59-year-old was close to the Saudi royal family and also served as an adviser to the government.

But he fell out of favour and went into self-imposed exile in the US in 2017. From there, he wrote a monthly column in the Washington Post in which he criticised the policies of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the son of King Salman and Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler.

In his first column for the Post in September 2017, Khashoggi said he had feared being arrested in an apparent crackdown on dissent overseen by the prince.

Khashoggi first visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 28 September 2018 to obtain a Saudi document stating that he was divorced, so that he could marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz.

But he was told he would have to return to pick up the document and arranged to come back on 2 October.

"He did not believe that something bad could happen on Turkish soil," Ms Cengiz wrote in the Post.

Ms Cengiz accompanied him to the entrance of the consulate on 2 October. He was last seen on CCTV footage entering the building at 13:14 local time.

Despite reassuring friends that he would not face any problems inside, he gave Ms Cengiz two mobile phones and told her to call an adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan if he did not come back out.

She ultimately waited for more than 10 hours outside the consulate and returned the following morning when Khashoggi had still not reappeared.

What did Saudi Arabia say?

For more than two weeks, Saudi Arabia consistently denied any knowledge of Khashoggi's fate.

Prince Mohammed told Bloomberg News that the journalist had left the consulate "after a few minutes or one hour". "We have nothing to hide," he added.